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Tesla Model S Has Bizarre 'Vampire-Like' Thirst For Electricity At Night
cartechboy writes "The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design wizardry, has a dirty little secret: Its a vampire. The car has an odd and substantial appetite for kilowatt-hours even when turned off and parked. This phenomenon has been dubbed the 'vampire' draw, and Tesla promised long ago to fix this issue with a software update. Well, a few software updates have come and gone since then, and the Model S is still a vampire sucking down energy when it's shut down. While this is a concern for many Model S owners and would be owners, the larger question becomes: After nine months, and multiple software updates,why can't Tesla fix this known issue? Tesla has recognized the issue and said a fix would come, yet the latest fix is only a tiny improvement — and the problem remains unsolved. Is Tesla stumped? Can the issue be fixed?"
Is Tesla stumped? Can the issue be fixed? Tune in tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
But on a serious note - I'm pretty sure the issue has something to do with this: http://sanctuary.wikia.com/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Now known as Lestat model S.
Vampire-like? Huh? Are we dumb kids here or sum'thin'? This is beyond anthropomorphization, man.
The energy has to go somewhere. They have power management on that car, as well as engineering telemetry. They know exactly where it goes. Let's cut the bullshit. As far as I can tell from how it looks, the energy is needed for something. I don't know what, maybe the batteries have high leakage, whatever, but it's not like the energy evaporates. The power/charge management system needs this energy, and what they are fixing is not some random energy drain - they are trying, and failing, to fix the underlying cause that is not easy to fix. I don't know if it's a design issue in electronics, or a battery issue, or what. But one thing is for sure: they know exactly where all those kWh end up at, but they're failing at resolving it. If the drain was significant on cold nights, I'd say that it goes into battery pack heaters.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Why use kWh/day when we can use W? Do these guys really not understand units, or is there some silly love for kWh/day?
This just makes me cringe:
"[...] 4.5 kilowatt-hours per day. That's the equivalent of three 60-watt light bulbs burning 24/7."
Couldn't he just say "190 watts"? (Or 180 W if he wanted to round incorrectly to match the light bulbs example).
They used to tell us that if technology ever got out of hand, we could always pull the plug.
Of course you are asleep when the problem occurs. If this were a low-wattage appliance you could just use one of those timers that people use for Christmas lights. You might be able to hack a heavy duty version of that by using a timer that moves a lever that knocks a bowling ball off a shelf. The bowling ball is tied to the Tesla power plug. That oughtta do 'er.
Ahh, but you say the Tesla doesn't always take the same time to charge? Easy. You just need to program it to tweet charge state to your phone. Then your phone can send something to the device that pushes the bowling ball off the shelf that pulls the plug.
Oh, but wait. Tweeting the location of your car isn't secure, and you may not have access to the car's APIs anyway. Besides, they're buggy and suspect.
So. You need to have a separate secure device in the car that monitors the charge state, and logs in to your web site with HTTPS and relays that information securely to the device that pushes the bowling ball off the shelf that pulls the plug.
There. All fixed. I just hope the ball doesn't roll off the shelf the wrong way and dent the car. To make sure that doesn't happen we need...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What does it do roam the roads by night draining the life out of Priuses ?
Tesla is renting the cars out at night using Google's self driving technology and Google maps to run a secret taxi service. That guy reported 10-15 miles of charge missing overnights, that could be a few fairs used to pay for more of Tesla's research.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
RTFA. One of the things the guy tried was to put a current draw device between the wall socket and the car and proved that it hadn't drawn any current overnight and that the power consumed had come from the car's batteries.
Years ago, Tesla, or Nicola Tesla as he was known, sent transmissions from the Wardenclyffe tower into the air, forever altering the electrical potential of earth's ionosphere. This potential remained as it had no path to the ground. Until, that is, cars powered by batteries with his namesake appeared. At night, this leftover induction discharges batteries of the Tesla Model S and will continue until the potential is balanced.
The on-board systems continue to suck juice from the vehicle's batteries overnight because Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) their sleep mode due to some issue waking them back up (incidentally, that makes this issue hardly mysterious or "bizarre").
Sometimes the simplest answers indicate someone didn't RTFA.
I used to think I'd have to drink blood or something to be a vampire, but no. I've now learned that since my stomach is full when I go to bed, and gets emptier while I sleep, leaving me hungry and in need of a little refuelling in the morning... that makes me a vampire!
Tesla Model S uses a proximity sensor to detect the key fob in your pocket and extend the door handle with a motor:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/video-sci-fi-wizardry-of-the-tesla-model-s-doors/index.htm
To quote from an article:
"From the instant you walk up to the Tesla S and the door handles motor out of the door, you know this isn't going to be like any other car you've ever driven. You open the door and the air conditioner has fired up, and your music is already playing. You put your foot on the brake, shift into gear, and you are off and running. There is no âoestartâ button. When you arrive, you just get out of the car; it turns itself off and locks up as you leave."
Tesla originally had a sleep mode for the inboard computer that was supposed to consume around 1%/day. But they found that the sleep mode often resulted in the car not detecting the key fob. So they disabled it until they could patch it. Not surprisingly, it sucks a lot of power while its sitting in non-sleep mode waiting for someone to walk by with the right key fob. If they had stuck with a manual door handle and a push start button for the engine, then the idle power issue would never have come up. In any case, Tesla is working on it and will resolved it eventually.
This is fixed in the european version of the software (I am a Model S owner in Norway). But the downside is that contacting the car with the Tesla App takes a bit longer and doesn't always work (the car needs to wake up to respond). I would guess they are having trouble with keeping the car polling their server while shut down. This is not "a real problem" in europe, as they have not released the app for europe yet (I'm using the american version to contact my car).
how about you simply don't plug it in unless you want to charge it? Duh!!!
Then the battery will discharge, about 5% of a full charge per day. Not leaving it on the charger just means more charge/discharge cycles for the battery.
It is slightly different in that Tesla cars are a lot more energy efficient than gas driven cars.
That is, it isn't a simple matter of transferring the energy from the power company to the car instead of getting it from the pump, rather the car itself uses less energy period. This is mostly a result of combustion engines wasting most of their energy towards producing heat rather than actually putting the car in motion (Hybrids are also guilty here - their main saving grace is that energy production is at more of a constant rate as well as frequent re-use of kinetic energy, so less energy is wasted as heat than a regular car, but energy is still wasted almost as much.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
This is ridiculous. How would this be in anyway have a basis for a lawsuit? Unless it is explicitly denied and hidden by the maker, which it isn't, why would you even consider that?
How about your TV. It also uses power while off... should we sue there? Your phone? Your laptop? How about your (traditional) car? It also slowly drains its battery while its parked in the garage... and I bet the car makers don't even recognize it officially. Should we sue?
The on-board systems continue to suck juice from the vehicle's batteries overnight because Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) their sleep mode due to some issue waking them back up (incidentally, that makes this issue hardly mysterious or "bizarre").
AKA Dracula, so the summary is right. He has issues with waking up during the day, and thus cannot sleep at night. Finally, the metaphor has been explained!
Monstar L
I think hitting a steel tow hitch at 70MPH is more than a little bump, or going through a concrete wall at 100MPh. People are blowing the fires all out of proportion. If a standard ICE car hit something like that in the engine compartment there's a good chance of a fire as well. In this case, since the battery is under the passenger compartment, a more likely scenerio would be for the debris to punch right through the floor and into the passenger compartment. Not one of the fires resulted in any damage to the passenger compartment of the car which cannot be said for most gasoline car fires I've seen.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The last software update (5.8) has improved things. From what I understand, power management with the Tegra 3 processor which is what the touch screen uses is rather broken. I talked with at least one developer who said that his company abandoned the Tegra 3 due to nVidia's horrible software management, providing non-working build environments and whatnot and that they don't give a changelog or seem to do any sort of version control.
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In America, you have a warning sticker for that.
In Europe, we have common sense for that.
My Sony compact audio system uses about 30W while off. My cable box uses about 20, with 10% more if it's on.
In America, you have a warning sticker for that.
In Europe, we have common sense for that.
In California, you may get cancer from that.
My Sony compact audio system uses about 30W while off. My cable box uses about 20, with 10% more if it's on.
Wow, that's a huge amount! My electricity supplier sent me a watt-meter because the government required them to do things to reduce consumption. Almost all appliances use only 1-2W if left on standby, the exceptions are the Wii (15W), the microwave (a massive 50W) and the desktop computers (5-10W).
We unplug/switch off at the mains* the Wii and microwave, which are rarely used anyway, and I switch off my own computer. Together this will saves about £80 over a year (65W * 1 year = 560kWh at £0.13/kWh, yet annual usage for the last 12 months was 2600kWh).
Shit. They have the Daily Mail in California too? I thought only us Brits had to put up with it
California's list is a little longer, such that (it seems like) nearly every consumer product and many places of business must be, by law, clearly labeled as potentially cancer-causing. Wish I had mod points for that AC!
You have to experience it first-hand to get it -- when you're outside the US it has no meaning. Then when you're in the US, at first, it's just like a bag of cement mix that has no warnings except in the "state of California" section, and it's a bit weird. When you finally visit the state and walk into a giant building (that is just like a train station or something) and the doors have a "this building contains materials that are known by the state of California to potentially cause cancer", it's just ridiculous.
Their "Welcome to California" signs on the highways and airports should have a "(there are materials in the state known by the state of California to cause cancer)" thing in the fine print.
And this is why an electric car should skimp on all of those gizmo-bells-and-whistles that really don't do much for the purpose. Take a Tesla, keep the batteries and charging, but give me a mechanically-driven speedometer and odometer, a nineties-era car stereo (with EEPROM for remembering the stations and a tiny CR2032 for keeping the clock running) and manually-controlled air conditioning and heat.
I don't need the touchscreen, the nav system, the multi-zone climate control, the internet connection, any of that stuff. I need the car to be comfortable, to work when I get in to drive, and to function properly.
And for those who'll argue, "but it's a luxury car! It has to have the electronics," I counter bullshit. My expensive bed doesn't have electronics, neither does my whirlpool bathtub, or my wetbar, or any of a huge number of other luxuries that I have afforded myself over the years. It needs to be simple, elegant, and to always work. It can be wrapped in expensive leather and finished with exotic wood and given the best comforting suspension and sound-insulated to almost silly levels without a single bit of electronics.
If the electronics compromise the basic function of the car then some serious reconsideration needs to be made for their inclusion.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.